


A Necessary Impossibility

by thatzodiacsky



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Drowning, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 11:20:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatzodiacsky/pseuds/thatzodiacsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose memorizes things and breathes too fast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Necessary Impossibility

Rose was just a teenage girl, kneeling on her knobby knees in front of the thrift store basin, murmuring a poem under her breath. She’d found it on the internet, scrolling through forum posts from 2005. It would never work, it would never work, it would never work. It was worth a try. She’d memorized it, mouthing the words and chewing her lip, marking the sloppy dark lipstick with crescent tooth marks. 

The next step had been to gather the supplies, strange and perfect things like a shark tooth, brittle fall leaves, a snake skin. Then she’d mixed them, grinding to a fine powder what she could (she gave up on the tooth) and scraping it into the bowl. Salt and tap water was next. It’s not exactly everything that tears are made of -- she looked it up -- but it’s close enough. With the potion complete she whispers the words from memory, as if afraid someone will hear her, as if her mother isn’t away for the weekend again. 

After the third repetition of the poem -- she refuses to call it a spell -- she stops, waits. Counts to seventeen, not daring to speak. Then she plucks a bleached blond hair from her head (her roots are beginning to show again, she should fix that) and drops it into the water.

The hair sinks, coiling at the bottom. It seems darker from the wet, although that may be just her imagination. No, it’s definitely darker. The black root is chasing the blond away, turning her hair to it’s natural state and growing, spiraling and tangling and filling the bowl with wavy black strands. 

Rose realizes that she’s mesmerized, and inhales, a sob of surprise when she realizes her feet are asleep. There’s no time though, there’s no time, because something is rising from the water in the bowl. Grey-skinned fingers with too many joints grip the rim, and reflective eyes like a cats’ peer up from the dark glass of the potion. Rose forces herself to breathe.

The creature breaks the surface, resting her chin on the edge of the bowl, and spreads purple lips in a sharp-toothed grin. The hair is hers, tangling from her head in waves that fill the basin and spill over the edge. She looks like a dead thing, an alien, maybe a monster. But she speaks (though her voice is a gurgle that only barely makes sense to Rose’s ears). “You are the prettiest human who’s ever called me, I think!”

Rose forces herself to be calm, twisting her lips in a smirk that she’s practiced since she was twelve. Her feet are still asleep, and she changes position, sitting cross legged in front of her visitor. Rose speaks.

“They said you would take me away from here.” She fervently hopes the fish girl doesn’t ask who ‘they’ is. All of her information comes from a sub-board on what had once been a thriving virtual pet site. The creature nods eagerly, the potion slopping up and over the edges. Rose pauses to note that there is really no way of such a creature fitting in the bowl (her shoulders alone are almost too wide for the basin) but dismisses it as a necessary impossibility. “So, will you?” She prompts.

The fish-girl nods again, holding out her hands. “It would be my pleasure.” 

The way she says ‘pleasure’ sounds much like ‘treasure’, and Rose wonders if that’s important, but she takes the damp hands anyway and tries not to shudder when the four-knuckled fingers close around her wrists like a cage. 

“My name is Feferi,” the creature explains, and before Rose can respond with something empty like ‘that’s a nice name’, she yanks. Rose’s chin hits the basin rim and she opens her mouth to shout but takes a gulp of the salty potion instead and then somehow she’s all the way underwater. 

It takes a long moment for her eyes to adjust, and she holds her breath. Feferi’s hands are gripping her wrists tightly still and now Rose can see her in full, a bone-thin figure clothed in nothing but a cloud of her dark hair. Feferi blinks at her, and it’s almost endearing. 

The pounding in Rose’s chest is now identifiable as a need to breathe as well as nerves, and her eyes go round in terror. She tries to pull away, to swim, but Feferi won’t let go and instead pulls her closer, drawing the smaller girl to her chest. Rose finds her cheek pressed to a knife-sharp collarbone as she kicks and fights, tears leaking from her eyes and completing the ingredients list. In the last moments, when Rose’s struggles grow less, the creature kisses her, alien tongue lapping up black lipstick like it’s candy. The human girl’s eyes close.

Later, Rose reawakens as though from sleep. She is in Feferi’s arms again (as it should be) and when she looks down she too is grey-skinned and naked, though Feferi’s hair will have to be clothing enough for the both of them. She tingles all over, like she’s cold or in love, and maybe it’s both. She no longer needs to breathe.

Dead-eyed and new-bodied, Rose is finally alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Someone on tumblr requested Rose/Feferi.


End file.
